00:00 NASA has finally managed to re-establish contact with the Voyager 2 spacecraft following two
00:07 weeks of silence after flight controllers sent a wrong command to the spacecraft that
00:12 tilted its antenna away from Earth.
00:14 To reposition the antenna, NASA's Deep Space Network sent an interstellar shout on Wednesday
00:20 with the help of the most powerful radio antenna in Canberra, Australia.
00:24 It was a long-shot attempt at sending instructions to write the spacecraft that required perfect
00:29 timing.
00:30 The command was timed to be sent during the best conditions during the antenna tracking
00:33 pass in order to maximize possible receipts of the command by the spacecraft.
00:40 As Voyager 2 is more than 12.19 billion kilometers from Earth, it took roughly 18.5 hours for
00:46 the command traveling at light speed to reach the spacecraft and another 18.5 hours to hear
00:52 back.
00:53 Crews therefore had to wait more than a day to learn whether their intervention had even
00:56 worked.
00:58 In the early hours of Wednesday in the US, Voyager 2 began returning signs and telemetry
01:03 data indicating that it is operating normally and that it remains on its expected trajectory.
01:10 On July 21, a series of planned commands sent to Voyager 2 mistakenly caused the probe's
01:15 antenna to point two degrees away from Earth, which disrupted the transmission of signals.
01:20 NASA engineers had detected a carrier or heartbeat wave from Voyager by using multiple observatories
01:25 around the world that forms the deep space network.
01:29 Although it was too faint to carry any data, it was enough to confirm that the mission
01:33 was still operating and it gave engineers hope that they could send a signal to adjust
01:37 the antenna positioning.
01:39 The two-week outage was believed to be the longest NASA had gone without hearing from
01:43 Voyager 2 in a mission that is well into its fifth decade.
01:46 The antenna only needed to be shifted two degrees to correct the error, but the situation
01:51 was not expected to be resolved until a scheduled automated realignment maneuver on October
01:56 15.
01:57 Voyager 2 and its twin, Voyager 1, were launched in 1977 to explore the outer solar system
02:03 and beyond while serving as a beacon of humanity in outer space.
02:07 Both spacecrafts carry "Golden Records," which are 12-inch gold-plated copper disks
02:12 that feature the sounds of Earth, such as thunder, rainfall, dogs barking, and the sound
02:18 of a baby.
02:25 [BLANK_AUDIO]
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